James Van Der Beek’s Kids: A Guide to the ‘Dawson’s Creek’ Star’s Large Family
What To Know
- James Van Der Beek praised his wife, Kimberly, and their kids for how they’ve supported him amid his cancer diagnosis.
- The couple has six children after tying the knot in 2010.
- Kimberly has also experienced multiple pregnancy losses, including two that were late-term.
James Van Der Beek married his wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, in 2010, and they wasted no time starting to grow their family. In August 2023, James found out he had colorectal cancer, a diagnosis he went public with in November 2024.
While giving an update on his journey on the Today show just over a year later, Van Der Beek praised his wife and kids for how they’ve dealt with his diagnosis. “[Kimberly] has just stepped up as a caretaker, as a nurse, as head of the household,” he gushed. “And then the kids, as much as I want to shield them from them seeing me in any kind of pain, you realize that resilience is not only something they have and can build, but is the best thing for them.”
Scroll down to learn more about the Van Der Beek family.
How many kids does James Van Der Beek have?
James and Kimberly are parents to six children. Their first child, daughter Olivia, was born in September 2010, just one month after they tied the knot in Israel. Olivia was the only one of the pair’s six children to be born in a hospital, as Kimberly has since opted for natural births.
“Kimberly did it as naturally as she could, but at the end of the day we were very glad we were in the hospital,” James later shared.
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In March 2012, James and Kimberly welcomed son Joshua. Kimberly delivered Josh at home with a doctor who specialized in delivering breech babies. Next came daughter Annabel in January 2014, followed by another daughter, Emilia, in March 2016, who was born at James and Kimberly’s home in Los Angeles.
June 2018 brought baby girl Gwendolyn to the crew, and the family was complete with the birth of son Jeremiah in October 2021. “The biggest concern was having enough one-on-one time with each child,” Kimberly admitted to People. “And it’s getting wildly expensive to travel. But we really felt another child knocking at our door.”
How many miscarriages did James Van Der Beek’s wife have?
Kimberly revealed on The Make Down podcast in 2020 that she’s had five miscarriages, including two recent ones (at the time) that were late-term and Kimberly referred to them as “really extreme.”
In November 2019, Kimberly miscarried at 17 weeks pregnant while James was competing on Dancing With the Stars. “The one in November, it was losing a ton of blood, losing consciousness over and over again and feeling like, ‘Am I going to die?'” she recalled.
James also spoke about the harrowing experience on Kimberly’s Bathroom Chronicles podcast in 2023. He explained that his wife miscarried in the shower and was then rushed to the hospital with a friend while he stayed home with the kids. “I’m just sitting there in a bathroom full of blood,” James remembered. “And dead little baby on the counter. It was just a gut punch, an emotional gut punch.”
In June 2020, James revealed that Kimberly had another miscarriage at 17 weeks. “We rushed @vanderkimberly to the hospital by ambulance for another harrowing night of blood transfusions,” he shared.
Where does James Van Der Beek’s family live?
The Van Der Beek family lives in Austin, Texas, having relocated there in September 2020. They made the decision to move from Los Angeles after taking a trip to Texas for their 10th wedding anniversary that year.
“We wanted to get the kids out of Los Angeles,” James told City Lifestyle. “We wanted to give them space, and we wanted them to live in nature. When we were flying here for our anniversary, I felt an energy to Austin. The energy was the same energy that I’d felt shooting Varsity Blues here when I was 21, and I realized that feeling wasn’t just where I was in my career or the movie I was shooting, all of which were very exciting, but that the energy is the place. It was really cool to realize, ‘Oh, I can go be there. We can drop in and bring our family to that.'”
Does James Van Der Beek homeschool his kids?
Yes, during a 2020 interview on The Make Down podcast, Kimberly confirmed that she and her husband had tried various different methods of homeschool. In addition to the “traditional” method, they’ve also hired teachers and tried a “homeschool co-op at another friend’s house.”
“It was a really beautiful experience,” Kimberly confirmed. “There were a few teachers and it was incredible.”
Kimberly went on to detail her problem with schooling, adding, “I think way too much is put on kids. I look at school, to be honest with you, as a form of imprisonment, where they spend hours of their day being told what to care about and what to learn. We want strong children that are creative, self-sufficient, can make their own decisions, but we put them like a lineup of kids, moving them from subject to subject, activity to activity.”
It’s unclear whether all the children are still currently homeschooled, as James shared a photo of his three older children heading to their “first day of school” in 2020 on Facebook.
